“To Love the Church is to Love Christ” – Fr John Kearney CSSp, 1939

"The Mystic Body shares the shame of the real Body. It is scoffed at and despised. But it also shares his glory." Image: Muncaksy, Christ in front of Pilate, Wiki Commons. Editors' Notes Many of those discussing the post-Vatican II crisis refer to "The Passion of the Church". Behind this is the idea that the …

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What do the catechisms say about heretics and the Church? Tradivox Catechism Review – Part II

"Who are those who are not to be accounted members of the Church?" Image: Pius XII saying Mass. Wiki Commons CC 2.0 Case Study This is the second part of a review of the ongoing Tradivox Catholic Catechism Index project. In the first part (the review itself), I discussed how we can use the authority …

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Notes on the nature of heresy, in light of the unity of the Church

"One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism." By James Larrabee This article is published with the permission of Mr James Larrabee. We are very grateful for the opportunity to make it available to our readers. We have added the various links to other articles. Image: St John Lateran, CC Attribution 4.0 International © Vyacheslav Argenberg / …

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Profession of Faith, Heresy and Separating Oneself from the Church – Canonist Fr Augustine OSB

“Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. “For not every sin, however grave it …

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The Loss of Ecclesiastical Offices: Is Holy Church Unprotected?

Image: Nestorius, who St Robert Bellarmine, St Celestine, St Nicholas and Cardinal Billot say lost his power to depose and excommunicate when he began preaching heresy. Wiki Commons. This is the first part of an essay by Mr John Lane, edited and expanded by S.D. Wright. It concerns the nature of law, offices and jurisdiction, …

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Learning Sacred Theology II: Ecclesiology, Dogmatic Theology and Apologetics

Theology is a science, with its own proper end and methodology. This three-part series is about how laymen can go about learning this science. I have freely gathered together notes, ideas and reading lists from various sources, particularly the Bellarmine Forums.[1] I hope that this part will be especially helpful to those confused by the …

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Membership of the Church: Part IV – Schism & Excommunication

Introduction In the first three parts of this series, we have seen that: The Catholic Church is a perpetually visible society which must therefore consist of members whose identity is discernible by the senses;The sacrament of baptism is necessary and sufficient for constituting an individual as both a subject and a member of the Catholic …

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How the ordinary magisterium expresses itself – Chapter IIIa of Fr J.M.A. Vacant’s nineteenth-century work on the magisterium

Chapter III of Vacant's work is long, and so the WM Review is publishing it in two parts. This first part addresses the express teaching of the ordinary magisterium, and the second will consider its implicit and tacit teaching acts. This part also describes the ways in which the Church makes use of natural sciences …

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The organs and instruments of the ordinary magisterium – Chapter II of Fr J.M.A. Vacant’s nineteenth-century work on the magisterium

The WM Review continues our translation and publication of this nineteenth work on the ordinary magisterium. As we already noted, the author J.M.A. Vacant was the initial director of the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique and was a seminary professor. This short work was awarded the prize for the theological competition in La Controverese, judged by …

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The Ordinary and Universal Magisterium of the Church – Chapter I of nineteenth-century work on the magisterium by J.M.A. Vacant

We are pleased to present another section from this study by J.M.A. Vacant, in which he addresses the concept and the authority of the ordinary and universal magisterium. We previously published Chapter VI of this work, on the Pope's personal exercise of this magisterium. Fr Vacant was a professor of the Major Seminary of Nancy, …

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